Research

My current research project is titled Affective Border-Crossings: Reading for Human-Nature-Culture Connections in Anglophone Literatures (more info later).

My earlier research project, Difficult Relations: Reading for Emotion in Recent American Experimental Poetry, examined ways of approaching recent American experimental poetry through emotion. What happens to a reader’s ability to “feel with” the text when a poem treats subjectivity, both that of the author and of the reader, as fluid and calls attention to uses of language and structure? How might we relate to emotion in conceptual poetry where the text material may have been derived from a variety of sources rather than describing a private experience? In experimental poetry, emotions like happiness and sadness are often characterized by uncertainty: Is this the writer’s “authentic” feeling? What happens to the reader in situations like these? In addition to these broader questions, the articles published in the project examined for example the connections between conceptual and confessional poetry and the concept of metamodernism as it relates to contemporary poetry. The project was funded by the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation, the Kone Foundation and by the Emil Aaltonen Foundation. Kone Foundation logo

Voit myös katsoa projektin suomenkielisen esittelyvideon (click on the link to see an introduction video to project – in Finnish, with English subtitles).

During the Difficult Relations project, I wrote the following articles: 

Siltanen, Elina. (forthcoming). “Bound by a shared affect”: Insights into reading and teaching emotions in recent poetry. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 24 (1).  

Guimarães, João Paulo & Siltanen Elina. 2023. “American Evil: Steven Zultanski’s Bribery, Liberal Guilt and the Quest for Authenticity”. English Studies 104 (2): 264-282. DOI: 10.1080/0013838X.2023.2170591.

Kokkola, Lydia & Siltanen, Elina. 2021. “’My Hard-Earned (Sámi) Identity’: The Hard Work of Uncomfortable Reading”. Scandinavian Studies 93, pp. 216-240. DOI: 10.5406/scanstud.93.2.0216.

Siltanen, Elina. 2020. “New Sincerity and Commitment to Emotion in Dorothea Lasky’s Poetry.” English Studies 101 (8), pp. 979-997. DOI: 10.1080/0013838X.2020.1847830. Open access. Read more here.

Siltanen, Elina. 2020. “Conceptual Confession: Asymmetrical Emotion in Writer-Reader Relations in Trisha Low’s The Compleat Purge”. Journal of Modern Literature 43 (4), Summer 2020, pp. 108-126. DOI: 10.2979/jmodelite.43.4.07 Read more here.

Siltanen, Elina. 2020. “Movement in the Present: Poetry as a Mindfulness Project in Bernadette Mayer’s Studying Hunger Journals.” In Movement and Change in Literature, Language and Society, eds Joel Kuortti & Sirkku Ruokkeinen, pp. 171-189. Baden-Baden: Academia (Nomos). DOI: 10.5771/9783896658685-171. Read more here.

 

My book, Experimentalism as Reciprocal Communication in Contemporary American Poetry: John Ashbery, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman came out from John Benjamins in October 2016. Read more about it here, or go directly to the publisher’s website and order it there.

In 2019, I published the article “Lapse of Happily: Consuming Everyday Banality in American Experimental Poetry”, which discusses works by Claudia Rankine and Robert Fitterman. Read more here.

 

My research interests include

  • contemporary American experimental poetry:
    – Language Writing, the New York School, Conceptual & post-conceptual poetry, etc.
  • poetry and emotion
  • poetry and authenticity
  • conceptual and confessional poetry
  • border poetics
  • ecopoetics
  • metamodernism
  • postmodernism
  • new approaches to reading and teaching complex literature
  • cognitive poetics
  • literature as communication
  • everyday life in literature

Conference papers (selection):

  • “Mutual Touching: Metaphorical and Concrete Borders in Divya Victor’s CURB.” Border Seminar, Gdánsk, Poland, May 23-25, 2023.
  • “Clark Coolidge’s The Land of All Time: a Jazz-Fueled Urban Ecopoem?”. Together with João Paulo Guimarães. At the Dusk of Literature?––21st-century North American writing in
    extremis. University of Łódź, Poland (online), June 25–26, 2021.
  • “Difficult Relations: Reading for Emotion in Recent American Experimental Poetry: Project presentation”. Kirjallisuudentutkimuksen päivät (The Finnish Literary Research Society’s annual conference), May 6-7, 2021.
  • “New Sincerity and the Performance of Emotion in Dorothea Lasky’s Poetry”. PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) conference, Bellingham, WA. November 9-11, 2018.
  • “A New Confessional Poetry: Recycled language and private provisions in Trisha Low’s The Compleat Purge”. ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) conference, Utrecht, The Netherlands. July 6-9, 2017.
  • “Being in the Present: Poetry as a ‘mindfulness’ project in Bernadette Mayer’s Studying Hunger Journals”. FINSSE-8, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi, Turku. June 7-9, 2017.
  • “Reading A New Confessional Poetry: The case of Trisha Low’s The Compleat Purge.” NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) conference, Baltimore, MD. March 23-26, 2017.
  • “Lapse of Happily”: Consuming Everyday Banality in Experimental Poetry. FINSSE-7, University of Vaasa. October 9-10, 2015.
  • ‘Hard Work: Reading, Community, and Collaboration in Ron Silliman’s Poetry’. FINSSE-6: English in the East conference, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu. October 18-20, 2012.
  • ‘“Launched in Context”: Lyn Hejinian Performing Ordinary Language’.  Major Minors: New and Neglected Issues in Literary Studies conference, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA. February 16-17, 2012.
  • ‘Voices of Others: Communication and Non-Identity in Contemporary American Experimental Poetry’. NAES-FINSSE 2010: English in the North conference, University of Oulu. June 9-12, 2010.

See more on Orcid: ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0002-8478-2278